OLD wine to drink! -- Ay, give the slippery juice That drippeth from the grape thrown loose Within the tun; Plucked from beneath the cliff Of sunny-sided Teneriffe, And ripened 'neath the blink! Of India's sun! Peat whiskey hot, Tempered with well-boiled water! These make the long night shorter, -- Forgetting not Good stout old English porter. Old wood to burn! -- Ay, bring the hillside beech From where the owlets meet and screech And ravens croak; The crackling pine, and cedar sweet; Bring too a clump of fragrant peat, Dug 'neath the fern; The knotted oak A fagot too, perhaps, Whose bright flame, dancing, winking, Shall light us at our drinking; While the oozing sap Shall make sweet music to our thinking Old books to read! -- Ay, bring those nodes of wit, The brazen-clasped, the vellum writ Time-honored tomes! The same my sire scanned before, The same my grandsire thumbed o'er, The same his sire from college bore, The well-earned meed Of Oxford's domes; Old Homer blind, Old Horace, rake Anacreon, by Old Tully, Plautus, Terence lie; Mort Arthur's olden minstrelsie, Quaint Burton, quainter Spenser, ay! And Gervase Markham's venerie, -- Nor leave behind The Holy Book by which we live and die Old friends to talk! -- Ay, bring those chosen few, The wise, the courtly, and the true, So rarely found; Him for my wine, him for my stud, Him for my easel. distich, bud In mountain walk! Bring WALTER good: With soulful FRED; and learned WILL, And thee, my alter ego (dearer still For every mood). These add a bouquet to my wine! These add a sparkle to the pine! If these I tine Can books, or fire or wine be good? |